There have been a lot of critiques of the sham Trump trial in NYC showing that there is no sign of any “there” there but in the latest critique Jonathan Turley boils it down to a single point:
The assumption was that no rational prosecutor would base a major criminal case almost entirely on the testimony of Michael Cohen, who was recently denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer peddling “perverse” theories in court.
“Now obvious”? Do you seriously mean to suggest that this wasn’t obvious from day one?
Frankly the next line of this piece is even more amusing:
Which is also why Bragg likely fears that the judge, not the jury, will decide the case.
No he doesn’t. If there has been one thing clear from the start of this entire process is that judge Merchan is there to make sure that Trump is convicted. His previous rulings all point in that direction, in fact the only reason he hasn’t put Trump in jail for contempt is fear that it will even further expose his court as the farce it is to the few in the country who haven’t figured it out.
The goal here is to give the left grounds to remove Trump from ballots or to give congress grounds to bar him from running because frankly it’s looking like Trump is going to win this thing far beyond the margin of believable fraud. That is Merchan’s entire purpose, to make this possible, particularly since the other cases are falling apart on a federal level. This is the preverbal “hail Mary” pass although given the corrupt nature of the move it’s more of a “hail satan”.
This isn’t a movie from the 30’s or 40’s where the corrupt judge or congressman decides to redeem himself at the end, this is part of a long trek of the American left toward the soviet system that they have craved for decades.
Furthermore If Merchan suddenly decided to act, like you know an actual judge he instantly becomes an “unperson” to the left a convenient scapegoat for Trump’s re-election. Whatever social life he has is gone, whatever favors that his family might have received is gone and it’s not like the right is going to suddenly embrace him for taking his oath as a judge seriously.
The only reason why this trial is taking place is because the verdict was decided long before it began. If the prosecutor’s entire case was Mr. Bragg singing “I’m a little teapot” Merchan would pass it to the jury and the jury would convict.
If you only have a minute and you want to know, in a nutshell, what the Netflix adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel from 1998, A Man in Full, is all about, here it is: The lead character, Atlanta businessman Charlie Croker, is Donald Trump–orange hair and all. Then throw in elements of the George Floyd and Rodney King stories and add an even more shocking ending than the one in Boogie Nights.
Earlier this month, Netflix started streaming the six-episode series, which stars Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane.
Wolfe, who is my favorite writer, after a two-decade career in journalism, made a smooth transition into fiction with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. It encapsulates the boom years of 1980s–along with the mayhem of pre-Rudy Giuliani New York City. Three years later, the film version was released. It is godawful, starting with the miscasting of Tom Hanks in the lead role as “the Master of the Universe,” Sylvester McCoy. After I suffered through the movie, I said to myself, Vanities is a mini-series not a two-hour movie.
I had hopes, misguided ones it turns out, that A Man in Full would be better, because it is a mini-series. Adding to my anticipation was Netflix streaming last year the insightful documentary, Radical Wolfe.
As A Man in Full begins, Charlie Croker (Daniels) is celebrating his 60th birthday at a party with Shania Twain entertaining his friends, family, and business associates. Two of those guests are executives from PlannersBanc, his principal lender, Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey) and Harry Zale (Bill Camp). While it appears that Croker is an Atlanta version of a Master of the Universe, he’s broke–Charlie owes PlannersBanc $600 million. He’s overextended with other lenders too. Peepgrass and Zale want to carve up Croker’s empire, starting with his quail hunting plantation and his corporate jet. A rescue is offered by the mayor of Atlanta, Wes Jordan (William Jackson Harper), who is campaigning for reelection, and Croker’s attorney, Roger White (Aml Ameen). But to save his neck, Croker will have to betray his former Georgia Tech football teammate, Norman Bagovitch (John Lacy), who is running against Jordan.
Bagovitch–wait for it–decries the status of the white male in his campaign. Jordan is Black.
David E. Kelley wrote the script, and he should be ashamed. No serious candidate for public office would campaign on such bigoted idiocy. And in Atlanta?!? Why does Kelley insult his audience?
Oh yeah, he wants to demonize Trump. Orange Croker Bad. Oops, I mean Orange Man Bad.
Joyce Newman (Lucy Liu) is an alleged victim of a sexual assault from Bagovitch. In the book, well, let’s just say there is fear of a race riot because of the racial angle of that alleged rape.
Wolfe, brilliantly in my opinion, centered much of his plot on racial contrast and conflict, but also on Croker being an anachronism. The series is set in 2024, but events in the book take place a quarter of a century earlier. Croker, nicknamed the 60 Minute Man because he starred on offense and defense for Georgia Tech, played a lead role for a national championship Yellowjackets team, at a time when major college sports teams in the South were not integrated. Croker came of age just as the civil rights protests were picking up steam, and when Jim Crow laws were still in force in Georgia and other southern states. The world changed, but Croker, not so much. Sure, of course Croker in the novel knew blacks had equal rights, but they still belonged– and I’m not endorsing his sentiment–“in their place.”
Kelley, and the directors, eliminates that angle by turning Croker into Trump. He even does away with Charlie’s redemption in Wolfe’s novel.
There’s even a climate change dig included in the series. I mean, why not?
As Croker, Daniels, who is usually very good, is an embarrassment, beginning with his overwrought Foghorn Leghorn southern accent and his Trump-sized abdominal paunch. On the other hand, Diane Lane, as Charlie’s first wife, shines. I had the pleasure of seeing her at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth a decade ago.
Wolfe’s novel is over 700 pages long, so it’s understandable that some storylines are condensed.
For instance, Conrad Hensley in the book is the child of worthless white hippies who, in spite of them, still manages to develop a strong moral compass. He works for Croker Foods in the East Bay area of California Hensley’s life, like Charlie’s, collapses. He ends up on the wrong side of the law after he violently tries to retrieve his towed car. By the way, anyone who has had his car towed and is forced to pay usurious fees to retrieve it, will sympathize with Hensley. In the series Hensley (Jan Michael Hill) is Black, and well, I already mentioned Rodney King and George Floyd.
The subplot with Peepgrass and Martha Croker remains, with the Boogie Nights twist added. If you crave more details on that, click on this Daily Mail link.
Oh, the Crokers’ son, Wally (Evan Roe), sure looks a lot like Barron Trump in the series.
Astonishingly, Trump-hating Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis doesn’t appear here. Maybe she was on a cruise with Nathan Wade during filming.
I guess I needed to suffer for some forgotten sins, because I endured all six episodes of A Man in Full. Of the other Netflix series that I punished myself with, in full, only The Pentaverate and Vikings: Valhalla were worse.
On the flipside, the cinematography for A Man in Full is sharp–Atlanta never looked so good. The soundtrack, compiled by Craig DeLeon, is spectacular, it’s as splendid as the best work of T-Bone Burnett. Keep an eye on DeLeon.
Wolfe, who died in 2018, didn’t like The Bonfire of the Vanities film. I don’t think he’d care for the series based on A Man in Full either.
I hated it.
A Man in Full is currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for violence, foul language, sex, and nudity.
The Eurovision song contest is the latest front of the war on Israel.
It’s seem a tad odd that I’m writing about the Eurovision Song Contest at all. All I really know about it comes from the Monty Python World Forum skit and the Doctor Who Episode that parodies the contest as the Intergalactic song contest in Bang a Bang Boom and frankly I’m a tad confused that Israel, a country not in Europe has an entry in it but be that as it may.
The “death to Israel” crowd has been rather vocal in protesting the Israeli entry to the contest to the point where massive security is needed to protect her from a loud and unruly mob both of Islamists and those who wish to curry favor with Islamists (the ‘kill me last caucus’ as I call them) among leftists in general and even among governments and broadcasters who lean left.
This is horribly unfair for two reasons.
The first be obvious in that it puts a young woman at risk for the ‘crime’ of “singing while Jewish” in the same way that the anti-Semite mobs at US colleges put students in danger for the crime of “learning while Jewish” The height of idiocy came from a reporter in a press conference actually asked if by her presence he was putting other contestants in danger:
An aggressively rude journalist insinuates Israeli Eurovision entrant Eden Golan is putting the public at risk by being there. She replies “this is for everyone” and the press pool cheers and applauds her. That put the victim blamer in his place.pic.twitter.com/JYvVqJ0u60
The irony of course is that this has caused a backlash to the point where she has not only easily moved toward the finals…
Apparently leaked results show Israel won 39% (!!!) of the Italian vote at @Eurovision. If that’s true, replicated across Europe, and the juries don’t scupper it…. See you at Eurovision 2025 in Tel Aviv. 🇮🇱 https://t.co/35K5TmL4wo
And that leads to the 2nd bit of unfairness of all of this.
You see the Islamic mobs and their enablers have been spending the last decade making a lot of European places unsafe for Europeans and it has become VERBOTEN in the woke world to call them out for it. It’s been bad. How bad? Well the best example I know of actually comes from Canada which is going down the same path as these guys:
Because the pubic can vote on this a lot of Europeans who don’t dare speak out publicly are able to take revenge on the Islamic mob by voting for Israel in this contest because they can do so without fear of retaliation. It’s a great way to stick it to the woke establishment in the same way that declining to buy Bud Light was a way to stick it to Anheuser-Busch when they insulted their customer base.
And while that might be satisfying it does defeat the purpose of a song contest which should be about one thing:
The best performance of a song.
These protesters are not just being anti-Semite bastards and putting people at risk they are also screwing other contestants in this contest who worked hard to get there and may, thanks to these ignorant bastards, not be judged by their performances. In other words they will be robbed of their chance to win.
Now I didn’t watch Eurovision as I have no interest in it And it may be that the final result (Israel 6th overall and 2nd in the public vote) might be what it deserved but the question is: if there wasn’t a mob trying to intimidate the 20 year old Israeli singer. Would we have seen a different result?
We will never know.
BTW Ukraine won the public vote, I wonder how much of that was sympathy as well?
Sadly dear readers, this will be my last post here for DaTechGuy. Unfortunately, it’s been a struggle to keep revenue coming in, and when Peter said he would have to start cutting writers, rather than let others deliberate over the decision, I made the choice to step down.
It’s not all a loss though. I recently retired from the military (hence the lack of “This post doesn’t represent the DoD…), so I’m starting a fresh new phase of life as a self-employed person. I started working for Peter when my daughter was in Yale’s Children Hospital. It was a good distraction from an otherwise depressing situation. She passed away right as we were house hunting, and that experience prompted me to write “To Build A House.” Had I not been regularly blogging on DaTechGuy, I don’t think I would have had the writing skills needed to finish the book, let alone the audiobook.
My last years in the military were busy, so although I have two books I want to write, I haven’t had the time to do so. Any writer out there knows that if you don’t keep writing, your skills diminish, so sometimes my weekend blogging for DaTechGuy was the only real writing exercise I could get. Peter gave me the freedom to write about whatever I wanted to, and often it was my escape from an increasingly oppressive military culture hell bent on DEI initiatives, white supremacist witch hunts, and anything else that would distract from its lack of warfighting ability.
As I leave DaTechGuy, I don’t get any less busy. I’m now working with a team of folks at Walk The Talk Foundation to try and bring some accountability to the military, particularly the flag and general officers that have run our services into the dirt. The media has missed the big story on the decline in military recruiting. It’s less about DEI and a lot more about the poor treatment of service members. Every person I know getting out has said they won’t recommend the service to their family members. Given that a large percentage of military members serve because mom/dad/grandpa did, that by far has been the biggest depressor of military recruiting. Since the GOFOs can’t bring themselves to apologize for losing Afghanistan, poorly managing our shipyards and not fixing military pay, people like me have responded in “Atlas Shrugged” fashion by shrugging off the expectation that we keep supplying the military with our sons and daughters. At some point it’ll break, and hopefully like in Atlas Shrugged, something better will rise from the ashes.
So between helping Walk the Talk, writing two more books, teaching travel classes and helping churches and non-profit organizations with their computer networks, plus raising 5 kids….yeah, I’ll be busy.
If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to ask that you consider either donating to DaTechGuy or buying one of his books on Amazon. Leftist extremists’ pour money into their fake news organizations and make it hard for those of us willing to write and publish to make a living. Buying what we write and engaging with us online helps build that support community that we need. It’s not enough to not watch CNN or stop buying coffee from Starbucks…you have to take that money and put it to good use elsewhere. Think of it as you’re helping to prop up the folks punching back against the mainstream narrative…you may not be able to do the punching yourself, but you can support those that do, and it’ll make a difference. Even better, more money for the smaller groups of individuals forces Republican lawmakers to take them more seriously. It’s a slow and imperfect process, but its far better than donating to the Republican general fund and praying for results.
My only other ask is you get out and vote this year, and seriously consider volunteering as a poll watcher. I assisted on Governor Youngkin’s campaign in a small way, and it was because many of us went door-to-door and supervised voting booths that he swept in and kept Virginia from going overboard on blue policies. Yes, it requires you to get off your couch, stop commenting on social media and start doing something useful. Your opponents are doing this in droves, and our institutions will crumble unless good people stand up to take them back.
And if you think “I’m in a red state, it can’t happen to me,” remember that your opponents aren’t content to leave you alone…they will come after you until you bend the knee…just look at the Jewish students being hunted on college campuses if you need an example.
Take care, fight the good fight, and always punch back twice as hard!
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